The Bee Cemetery

Illustrations by Grace McKenna

The Cemetery was situated at the bottom of a pillar of rock at the edge of the woods, past the long grass, past the ticks, and past the rabbits in their cages in the lane. 

The Bees were abundant in the spring, and by the age of ten, I had been stung three times– once on the chin, once on the thigh and once on the grass whilst playing barefoot. My sister remained untouched. She liked to consider herself in alliance with the Bees– her, a small thing among the daisies, clad in a dress spotted with beetles and sitting near the swings. There was a nest there. It bothered her not. Her head was full of fleeting ideas and wonderings. Why did the ants look different here? Were the ladybirds a different shade of red? And longer, too? 

When August came, the Bees had a tendency to float to a shaded spot and die, and in the summers of our youth, my sister and I liked to bury them. 

First, while they still drew breath, if Bees did, my sister and I went along quickly to find our mother. 

Our footsteps were sprightly as we hopped from cobble to cobble along the terrace, past the hole in the wall where the dog used to be kept, and up the cement steps to our bedroom. (Our little feet were never hurt by the stone, for they were used to its roughness.) 

Besides, there was no other way to go. No small thing ever went through the front door to the kitchen, because running children would be scolded, and ants crushed, and all should always have their shoes on. Our cowboy friend laughed at us for this, even though his grandfather’s hat was far too big for him and slipped down his forehead clumsily. Lucky Luke. Stupid Cowboy. 

‘Mummy!’ we cried, once inside. ‘What do Bees like?’ 

In those late afternoons, Mum liked to lie awake in the orange room, or when the sun hit the curtains, the room of one thousand ambers. It was she who had to go to the kitchen for the honey and water, because the kitchen was the realm of the old and the hateful, for those who made bread and stunk the house out with gruesome patés. It was not for children to dip their hands in flour and spoil their beetle dresses, or to eat before they were told to do so. Best not to sully the hands of a little girl. 

Our mother could pass freely between the two spheres like this, but the secret always was that she preferred the Bees’ world. 

The pillar near the woods seemed larger to us than it really was, nestled in and among patches of lavender, lilacs and hydrangeas, and other wild flowers with stems thick and thin alike. It was said that our grandmother’s cat was buried there, as well as one of our distant relatives. Mother denied this, but sometimes we could feel them standing and watching us from the trees. 

So the healing state had failed, and the Bee lay in a thin shroud of toilet roll that we had garnished with fallen petals and specks of rosemary. It had to be rosemary, for we weren’t allowed to pick the flowers. The sweetened water lay in drops on a hot tile– a Bee’s final supper in the heat of afternoon.

Kneeling for the pillar, hands sweeping away dry grass, we used small sharp stones as troughs and brought up the earth as quickly and violently as robbers in the night. Dirt and grub filled my nails as I worked, but my sister had grown restless and was wandering across the fat, round tiles that filled the space between the flowers. They were hot from bathing in the sun all day, and it filled her with a gratifying warming sensation. The Bee would be very happy here, among all of the others– the tired Bees, the scorched Bees and the ones with broken wings. 

I almost mistook her voice for crickets chirping. 

‘Do you remember when I ate a snail? I found it on the ground here.’ 

I did not remember. 

‘I thought it might have been chocolate.’ 

Whenever I return now to the rock, I am often alone. My sister doesn’t like to come back, and when she does, she continues to ask questions, like: ‘Where did all of the ants go?’ 

On windy nights, a sea away from the thick-stemmed flowers and warm stones to stand on, in a cold and starless valley somewhere up north, after we had realised that the rabbits were killed for eating and that our family would not live forever, my sister turned to me and told me that even though ten years had passed, she could still taste the snail in her mouth, if she really tried.